Monday, July 25, 2011

Roughly a decade ago, Al Pacino starred in a movie entitled S1m0ne, a cyber-era
updating of the
Pygmalion myth in which a film director creates an uncannily realistic
digital actress. Despite the fact that “Simone” was a computer-rendered
composite fantasy, the lustrous blond enchantress becomes a global pop culture sensation – a profitable illusion sustained through increasingly desperate acts
of misdirection on the part of the director.

It’s tempting to think that accused
Norwegian mass murderer Anders Breivik is a S1m0ne-style digital fantasy drawn to specifications provided by
Morris Dees’ so-called Southern Poverty Law Center. Breivik used social
networking sites to create a cyber-persona seemingly made to order for
left-leaning “watchdog” groups. Available photographs depict the blond,
stereotypically Nordic Breivik as if he were a dress-up doll, his face oddly
unmarked and expressionless as he poses in a variety of guises – including
Freemason garb and a scuba outfit.

In similar fashion, his recorded ideological pronouncements –
the quotes attributed to him in the aftermath of the killing spree in Oslo and
Utoya, and his bloated “manifesto” – could be the work of someone determined to
embody every detail of the familiar caricature of the right-wing “hate criminal.”

Whatever we eventually learn about Breivik’s background and
motivations, one detail of the killing spree he allegedly perpetrated offers a
timely and critical lesson practically everybody has missed: We should never trust an armed man wearing the costume of a police officer.

The uncomfortable but unavoidable fact is that every state-employed “sheepdog” is a potential murderer, and should be treated as
such. We have this on the unimpeachable authority of “Jack Dunphy,” an
active-duty officer in the employ of the Los Angeles Police Department.

In every encounter between a police officer and a “civilian,”
Dunphy
writes, the officer is “concerned with protecting his mortal hide from
having holes placed in it where God did not intend. And you, if in asserting
your constitutional right to be free from unlawful search and seizure fail to
do as the officer asks, run the risk of having such holes placed in your own.”

What
this means is that a Mundane who displays anything other than abject servility
is perceived as a threat to “officer safety” – and, by Dunphy’s calculation, is a
suitable subject for immediate termination.

In a June 8 traffic stop that was captured on video, Harless
repeatedly threatened to murder the driver, William E. Bartlett, for carrying a
concealed handgun for which he had obtained a the appropriate permit. At the
time, Bartlett was attempting to comply with the state ordinance by notifying
Harless that he was carrying a weapon, and displaying his concealed carry
license. Bartlett was composed and deferential; Harless’s behavior was that of
a borderline psychotic eagerly seeking an excuse to kill somebody.

“As soon as I felt your gun I should have took [sic] two
steps back, pulled my Glock 40 and just put 10 bullets in your ass and let you
drop,” snarled Harless. “And I wouldn’t have lost any sleep.” Thus did Harless
slay the diligently propagated fiction that police officers are burdened with a
bone-deep dread of pulling their firearms.

After threatening to “put lumps on” a witness to the
incident, Harless told Bartlett, “I’m so close to caving in your f*****g head….
You’re just a stupid human being…. F*****g talking to me with a f*****g gun.
You want me to pull mine and stick it to your head?” He later threatened to
stop Bartlett every time he saw him, towing – that is, stealing – his car and
taking him to jail.

“Obviously, whatever transpired on that video was an
isolated incident,” sniffed Bill Adams, commissar of the local police union.
The “whatever” Adams blithely dismissed was aggravated assault with a deadly
weapon: Rather than continuing to receive a paycheck for sitting at home
swilling beer and consuming internet porn, Harless should be in jail awaiting trial.

Furthermore, this incident was an “isolated” one only as that term applies to
those individuals and that particular location; it is anything but atypical of
the behavior of the State’s thuggish enforcer caste.

Harless merely threatened to pull his gun and stick it to
William Bartlett’s head. According to the eyewitness testimony
of his former partner, Officer Sergio Vergillo, that’s what Phoenix
Police Officer Richard Chrisman did to 29-year-old Danny Rodriguez just
seconds before he gunned down the family’s dog and murdered the unarmed man.

Chrisman and Vergillo responded to a call from Rodriguez’s
mother, who was upset with her son’s behavior. Rodriguez demanded that Chrisman
present a warrant. Drawing on the same lexicon of public service used by Patrolman
Harless, Chrisman
shoved a gun against Rodriguez’s temple and sneered, “I don’t need no warrant, mother****r.”

Within seconds Chrisman had shot the dog, which – according to his partner –
exhibited no threatening behavior. This left Rodriguez understandably upset.

“Hey, why did you shoot my dog?” Rodriguez bellowed at the
intruder. Five seconds later, he was dead – thereby validating Officer “Jack
Dunphy”’s warning that summary execution is considered condign punishment for
any Mundane who annoys a member of the Exalted Brotherhood of Coercion by
asserting his rights.

One
of the victims, a 40-year-old disabled man named Ronald Madison, received a
shotgun blast to the back of his head, and then was shot at least three more
times while he was face-down on the ground. Lance
Madison, an eyewitness to the murder of his brother by the police, was arrested
and charged with “attempted murder of police officers” – a charge that was
eventually dismissed.

While the murders at Danziger Bridge differed in scale from
the bloodletting in Norway, it was also a fatal ambush in which the
perpetrators were attired in a costume signifying “authority” -- and they behaved
with the same pathological ruthlessness displayed the perpetrator of massacre
on Utoya.

Whenever an innocent person is confronted by an armed stranger in what appears to be a
government-issued costume, one danger is that he is an imposter. An even more
dangerous possibility is that he isn’t.

By the way....

... here's a link to the second hour of last week's Pro Libertate Radio program, which features a discussion of the demented Daniel Harless and other distinguished defenders of public order.

My thanks, once again...

... to everyone who has donated to Pro Libertate, and for the patience many of you have displayed in awaiting your copies of Global Gun Grab, which will be arriving within the week. Thank you once more, and God bless!

Monday, July 18, 2011

We want to live
pure, we want to live clean -- We want to do our best;

Sweetly
submitting to authority, leaving to God the rest....

“The Obedience Song,” as sung every week in American Sunday School
classes

It
is with pride that we see that one man is kept above all criticism -- the
Fuhrer. The reason is that everyone feels and knows he was always right
and will always be right. The National Socialism of us all is anchored in the
uncritical loyalty, in the devotion to the Fuhrer that does not ask for the
wherefore in the individual case. We believe that the Fuhrer is fulfilling a
divine mission to the German destiny! This belief is beyond all challenge.

Rudolf Hess,
June 25, 1934, as cited in an appendix to the official transcripts of the
Nuremberg Tribunal

In preparation for the Iraq war, the Pentagon’s war planners devised acomputer modeling program called “Bugsplat” to estimate the percentage of
civilian casualties that would result in a given bombing raid. Just before the “Shock
and Awe” assault on Baghdad began, Gen. Tommy Franks was informed of twenty-two
proposed bombing attacks that would result in what was described as “heavy
bugsplat.” He approved all twenty-two raids.

The term “bugsplat” has become commonplace
now that missile-equipped remote-controlled drones have become the Regime’s
weapon of choice for prosecuting wars in at least a half-dozen countries. That’s
assuming that the term “war” applies to a campaign of state terrorism in which thousands
of helpless and entirely innocent people have been slaughtered in unexpected
aerial bombardments waged by “warriors” who manipulate drones from the safety
of climate-controlled offices in Nevada. The only combat-related risks those valiant
cushion-crushers confront is the possibility of chronic diseases attendant to a
sedentary lifestyle.

"Predator Porn": Future "Bugsplat" victims....

The same lexicon of long-distance
mass murder that gave us the term “bugsplat” offers another newly minted term
to describe the terrified civilians who can be seen frantically running for
cover: “Squirters.” The vaguely pornographic overtones of that expression are
appropriate, given the ubiqtuity of what Dr. P.W. Singer of the Brookings
Institution calls “predator
porn” – footage of drone attacks proudly circulated by the purported heroes
responsible for the carnage.

In a
2009 U.S. Naval Academy lecture, Singer described how “the ability to
download a video clip of combat is turning war into a form of entertainment.”
This repellent new genre includes a modern variety of snuff
film: “A Hellfire missile drops, goes in, and hits the target, followed by
an explosion and bodies tossed into the air.” Singer described one clip of that kind, sent to him by a joystick-wielding assassin, that “was set to
music, the pop song `I Just Want to Fly’ by the band Sugar Ray.”

Singer recalls asking a drone
pilot “what it was like to fight insurgents in Iraq while based in Nevada. He
said, `You are going to war for 12 hours, shooting weapons at targets,
directing kills on enemy combatants, and then you get in the car and you drive home.
And within 20 minutes, you’re sitting at the dinner table talking to your kids
about their homework.” Meanwhile, somewhere in Iraq (or Afghanistan, Pakistan, Libya,
Somalia, Yemen, or another country yet to be identified), families are
picking through the rubble of their homes in the rapidly evaporating hope that
their own children have somehow survived this most recent act of imperial
generosity.

The Money Shot: Note the "squirter" fleeing in terror.

Do such keyboard bombardiers ever
experience misgivings about what they do? Perhaps – but the perverse
fun is simply irresistible.

“It’s like a videogame,” one
cyber-samurai told
Singer. “It can get a little bloodthirsty. But it’s f****g cool.”

Oh. Well, alrighty then.

But what happens when the novelty
wears off, and conscience starts to press its claims? When “coolness” loses its
allure, conformity – displayed by obedience to “authority” -- will fill the
void. “If his cause be wrong,” insisted one of Henry V’s soldiers in Shakespeare’s rendering,
“our obedience to the king wipes the crime of it out of us” – even if this
means waging aggressive war, murdering disarmed prisoners, and using the
threat of mass rape and the slaughter of children to compel cities to
surrender.

For those on the delivering end,
drone-facilitated atrocities seem utterly antiseptic. One scientist employed by
the Pentagon to refine and expand the technology of remote-controlled mass
murder “said that no ethical or legal issues arise from robots in war,” Singer
recalls. “That is, unless the machine kills the wrong people repeatedly,”
interjected the Strangelovian bureaucrat. “Then it’s just a product recall
issue.”

Of course, the specific tool doesn’t kill anyone; it is an instrument employed by a morally
accountable human being to accomplish that end.
We’re not discussing Colossus,
or Skynet, the Cylons, or any of the other variations on the Golem legend that are
common in science fiction. The Regime’s apparatus of state slaughter is proudly
described by retired Lt. Col. John Nagle as “an almost industrial-scale …
killing machine.” Its most important components are individual Americans who
have been taught that “submitting to authority” validates any action, no matter
how abhorrent, and sanctifies the indulgence of any appetite, nor matter how
depraved.

In the imperial hierarchy of
values, obedience ranks much higher than moral integrity, particularly for those employed as agents of state-licensed violence. The Regime, both the federal level
and through its state and local franchises at the state and municipal levels, has
spent a great deal of money on subsidized “character” instruction, paying special
attention to the military and law enforcement. The most influential contractor
in this field is “Character First,” an Oklahoma City-based “leadership
development” company. Predictably, its teachings emphasize obedience and "teamwork" at the expense of individual moral initiative.

Never married himself, Gothard presents himself as something
of a Rev. Sun Myung Moon-like "ideal
parent," using his Institute in Basic Life Principles (IBLP) to teach a detailed program of marriage, family, and character
development based on "Seven Principles" and "49 Traits." Gothard's admirers and political allies include presidential aspirants Rick Perry and Sarah Palin. Texas Congressman Sam Johnson (R-Texas) is chairman of the IBLP's board of directors. More than a few prominent politicians (including Palin, when she was Mayor of Wasilla) have attended Gothard's International Association of Character Cities conferences.

The worldview promoted by Gothard is severely
hierarchical, with all human relationships built on a "chain of command.”
From his perspective, "rights" are a fiction, that refusal to submit to
"authority" is akin to "witchcraft.” And, yes, Gothard does
have a “Little Red Book” outlining his teachings, but it is available
only to his committed disciples. During the 1970s, hundreds of thousands of people attended mass seminars organized by Gothard, who positioned himself as a bulwark against a self-centered and subversive counterculture. Thus there's more than a little irony in the fact that the Soviets took a shine to Gothard's approach: In 1991 -- while the Hammer & Sickle were still flying over Moscow, and the CPSU was still in charge -- Gothard was invited to set up a five-acre campus in Moscow for a Russian offshoot
of his Advanced Training Institute.

When one of Gothard’s followers
created “Character First” in 1992, he appropriated Gothard’s
“49 Character
Qualities,” repackaging them in terms that would be acceptable to
secular institutions. This produced a platitude-heavy catechism that differs
little from what can be found in the texts on management theory and personnel
motivation that clutter the business section of any chain bookstore.

“Character
First” propagates its message through the standard array of media products –
among them a monthly newsletter, illustrated with cartoons depicting various
animals as embodiments of certain desirable traits. The organization also "works with government leaders and community
organizations around the world who want to promote character on a local
basis," boasting that its initiatives have been embraced by civic officials in six states and scores of cities in the U.S. and in more than a half-dozen countries abroad.

Significantly, the type of
principled individualism necessary to confront and expose institutional
corruption isn’t found anywhere on the "Character First" list of traits deemed essential to good
character (“the inward values that determine outward actions,” as defined by “Character
First”). However, the list prominently mentions “obedience” – “quickly and
cheerfully carrying out the direction of those who are responsible for me”; "deference"
-- "limiting my freedom so I do not offend the tastes of those around
me"; and "discretion" -
"recognizing and avoiding words, actions, and attitudes that could bring
undesirable consequences" -- among the traits identifying an individual of
"character."

A government employee whose
daily routine involves annihilating people on the other side of the globe via
remote-controlled drones would have no problem displaying the attitudes and
attributes listed in the “Character First” inventory – assuming that he
efficiently and conscientiously carried out “the direction of those who are
responsible for me.” By way of contrast, “Character First” offers no support or
solace for the whistle-blower or conscientious objector.

Yes, the checklist does mention “Justice”
– “Taking personal responsibility to uphold what is pure, right, and true” –
but the practical application of that principle assumes that it is the
prerogative of those in “authority” to define what is “pure, right, and true.” Thus
“accountability,” as defined
by the “Character First” program, always operates from the top down – never
from the bottom up.

Under the “Character First”
formula, imprisoned whistleblower Bradley Manning – who, as it happens, is also
native to Oklahoma – would have been considered an exemplary soldier if he had
been content to obey his superiors and abet the cover-up of war crimes in Iraq.

As an intelligence analyst
stationed in Iraq, Manning was immersed in a steady stream of “bugsplat”
videos. “At times it felt like watching nonstop snuff films,” observes
a recent New York magazine profile
of the prisoner of conscience. “An intel analyst sat at his work station and
targeted the enemy, reducing a human being to a few salient points. Then he
made a quick decision based on imperfect information: kill, capture, exploit,
source.”

Overwrought with misgivings
about the war before being shipped to Iraq, Manning had consoled himself with
the thought that he might actually be able to discriminate between “bad guys”
and innocent bystanders, but that illusion perished abruptly in combat. “At one
point, he went to a superior with what he believed to be a mistake,” points out
New York magazine. “The Iraqi Federal
Police had rounded up innocent people, he said. Get back to work, he was told.”

Manning’s first breach of “confidentiality”
came in late 2009, when he told a
psychological counselor “about a targeting mission gone bad in Basra” in which
an innocent bystander was killed, leaving Manning crippled with remorse.
Shortly thereafter, he allegedly began leaking the Iraq war logs, which
some day will be seen as an indispensable chronicle of a world-historic
atrocity.

The first and most potent
revelation came in the form of the notorious – “bugsplat” video entitled “Collateral Murder.” That
video documented the slaughter – by two U.S. Apache helicopter gunships – of twelve
innocent civilians, including two employees of the Reuters news agency. Two
children were among the wounded.

Former U.S. Army Specialist
Ethan McCord, who can be seen in the video attempting to carry the wounded
children to safety – has testified that this war crime was the product of a “standard
operating procedure” dictating “360 degree rotational fire” in residential
neighborhoods in retaliation for IED attacks on occupation troops.

“If PFC
Bradley Manning did what he is accused of, he is a hero of mine,” writes
McCord, “not because he’s perfect or because he never struggled with personal
or family relationships—most of us do—but because in the midst of it all he had
the courage to act on his conscience.”

But conscience has no place in the Empire’s hierarchy of
values. It is sand in the gears of imperial violence, for which conformity is
the optimal lubricant.

I’m tempted to say that if the “Character First” program had
been in existence in the 1930s, it could have been translated into German and
marketed to the Nazi hierarchy without modification. But this isn’t strictly
accurate: Nazi Germany did have its equivalent of “Character First” – a State-centered
doctrine called “Positive Christianity,” in which obedience to “authority” was
defined as the highest practical good and a categorical imperative.

After the National Socialists came to power, writes Eric
Metaxas in his splendid biography Bonhoeffer:Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy, “Some church leaders felt the church should
make peace with the Nazis, who were strongly opposed to communism and
`godlessness.’ They believed the church should conform to the Nazi racial laws
and the Fuhrer Principle. They thought that by wedding the church to the state,
they would restore the church and Germany to her former glory…. Hadn’t Hitler
spoken of restoring moral order to the nation? They didn’t agree with him on
everything, but they believed that if the church’s prestige were restored, they
might be able to influence him in the right direction.”

The eternal refrain of
temporizers, opportunists, and collaborators is that they can “do more good” by
“working from within” the system, on the assumption that their sheer decency
and inexhaustible virtue will have a purgative effect on even the most degenerate
public institutions – and that obedience to authority will cover a multitude of
sins.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, whose heroic
resistance to the Nazi regime was a product of his unconditional commitment to
God, would almost certainly admire the character and courage displayed by the
atheist Bradley Manning in exposing war crimes. He would likewise see something familiar in the effort to cultivate a population of polite, punctual, dutiful, thrift, orderly collaborators in institutionalized evil.

In 1933, many of Bonhoeffer’s pious friends chided him
for his insistence on opposing the Nazi regime. The Third Reich was an
irresistible tide, Bonhoeffer was told; it was better to “ride the wave”
than to stand against it and be overwhelmed.

Choosing a different metaphor,
one that would acquire grim connotations within a few years, Bonhoeffer gently
but firmly dismissed the idea of collaboration: “If you board the wrong train,
it is no use running along the corridor in the opposite direction.”

Wednesday, July 6, 2011

"... the Party hands out to you no prospect of reward.... We propose no bargain and we promise nothing. There is a passage in your journal which impressed me. You wrote: `I have thought and acted as I had to. If I was right, I have nothing to repent of; if wrong, I shall pay.... You were wrong, and you will pay, Comrade Rubashov."

Party interrogator Gletkin explains to loyalist Rubashov why the best interests of the Party require his liquidation, from Arthur Koestler's novel Darkness at Noon.

"While an investigation is still underway to determine the facts immediately surrounding the killing, it is my hope that this tragic event will lead to a renewed discussion of the policies that routinely lead to heavily armed and militarized local police invading private homes and a renewed interest in the civil liberties codified in our Bill of Rights," wrote Miller.

In a free society, "law enforcement" wouldn't exist, although the presence of peace officers would be tolerated. Conditionally. In a constitutional republic, public demonstration of distrust toward "law enforcement" would be considered a token of conscientious citizenship. In the American Soyuz, however, criticizing "law enforcement" is akin to engaging in "anti-Soviet agitation and propaganda." To that supposed offense, Miller added the even more grievous sin of undermining the interests of the Party. Acting on dubious procedural grounds, the Committee demanded Miller's resignation.

The Bolshevik faction of the Pima County GOP does its duty.

"Mr. Miller's statements regarding the SWAT raid have created serious problems for our elected officials, money raising efforts and have divided the Party," fulminated the commissars in a public rebuke. "Mr. Miller was given repeated opportunities to either mend these fences or resign his position, and has chosen to do neither."

As committee member Brian Brenner explained: "This is solely about the interests of the Pima County Republican Party." Nothing else is -- individual liberty, the preservation of the rule of law, or even the integrity of the constitutional framework for which Republicans express such pious reverence -- is consequential.

"For these people, it's all a big money machine," Miller complained in an interview with Pro Libertate. "We live in Arizona's only Democrat-majority county, and the entrenched Republican establishment here has become comfortable with the status quo. Sure, they never actually win, but they are comfortable and secure. The last thing they want is for people seriously committed to individual liberty to start shaking things up."

Miller, who describes his political agenda as "progressively less government until we get to none," hasn't gotten along well with the torpid, self-satisfied Old Guard in the Pima County Republican Party, and his critics were eager to exploit Miller's measured but critical comments about the killing of Jose Guerena.

"About four days after I sent that e-mail, we had an emergency committee meeting in which a representative of the Tucson Police Officers Association" -- the local police union -- "laid into me for about an hour about how I had called policemen `murderers,'" Miller recounted. "I hadn't actually used that term; I had described the incident as leading to the `wrongful death' of Jose Guerena"

The commissar from the police union reacted to that description by telling Miller, "I never want to hear anything like that coming out of your mouth again." Miller, an Air Force reservist, replied that he would always defend the principle of citizen oversight of the police, just as he supports civilian control of the military.

"You have no right to criticize law enforcement," insisted the police union official. "You've never been in law enforcement." That comment, Miller says, "really lit up the room," startling even some of his critics on the committee -- but not enough, alas, to get them to re-examine their priorities.

"Within 24 hours," Miller recalled to Pro Libertate, "the TPOA contacted every elected Republican, and every Party official, and told them to muzzle me." This demand carried considerable weight in a Party apparatus controlled by people who defer reflexively to anyone clad in the habiliments of the State's punitive priesthood. As Miller puts it, the old-line Republican leadership will always "bend over and grab their ankles when ordered to by the `public safety' unions." This is particularly true in Tucson, where police unions and their allies "scream bloody murder anytime there's hint of cutting back on personnel or benefits."

Tucson was one of the first cities in Arizona to experience the impact of the housing bubble's collapse. Like many other municipalities, Tucson was faced with the deadly combination of plummeting home prices, accumulating foreclosures, and depleted revenue streams. As is the case elsewhere, the highest priority of the political class (including the real estate and financial service interests that had absorbed the local economy during the bubble) was to retain the loyalty of the legions.

Thus in 2009 Tucson unveiled Prop. 200, the "Public Safety First" initiative, a measure that would have required the hiring of hundreds of additional police officers over a five-year period at an estimated price of $157 million. Owing to the huge and growing municipal budget deficit (which had climbed to $51 million by 2010),this most likely would have required cutting back, or abolishing outright, every other program or "service" that didn't involve "public safety" -- that is, the exercise of government-licensed compulsion on behalf of the wealth-consuming class.

"People don't feel safe in the city of Tucson," quavered Colin Zimmerman of the Tucson Association of Realtors (TAR), which promoted Prop. 200. "They don't feel safe in their homes. They don't feel safe in the schools. Businesses don't feel safe and don't want to relocate here."

Brandon Patrick, who organized the ultimately successful effort to defeat the measure, insisted that the TAR was peddling the purest piffle. "The suggestion that there's more need than ever before for police is nonsense," Brandon told the Tucson Weekly shortly before the election. In fact, crime rates in Tucson -- as was the case elsewhere in Arizona -- were down dramatically

When Tucson's tax victims refused to consent to another assault on what remained of their wealth, Rep. Gabrielle Giffords intervened on behalf of the armed tax-feeders by arranging for the city to receive a $12.3 federal grant from the "Justice" Department's "Community Oriented Policing Services Hiring Program" -- which is why the same police union that wants Brian Miller's head on a charger endorsed the incumbent Democrat for re-election in 2010. (It's also worth noting that Clarence Dupnik, the Sheriff who presided over the SWAT team that murdered Jose Guerena, is also a Democrat.)

As is the case in nearly every significant American city, Tucson's municipal oligarchy grew fat during the Fed's housing bubble, and is now desperate to keep the "Public Safety" bubble inflated by any means necessary. This helps explain why Miller's carefully modulated public criticism of the needless death of Jose Guerena, and militarization of police in general, provoked the wrath of Tucson's ruling caste: Parasites of that kind are increasingly dependent on federal "public safety" subsidies.

It simply won't do for a Republican leader to abet doubts about the wisdom of the architects of the Homeland Security State, and the mouth-breathing armed minions who carry out their orders. This is true even when a pack of armored plunderers invades a home, guns down a young father in front of his terrified wife and toddler, and then deliberately allows the victim to bleed to death when timely medical assistance would have saved his life.

Despite the escalating campaign to oust him as chairman of the Pima County GOP, Miller makes a compelling case that he's accomplished exactly what he was elected to do.

"I was elected to raise funds, bring in young voters, and expand our outreach to Hispanics," Miller told Pro Libertate. "We've had great success on all three fronts. What's happening now is in part an ideological clash, and perhaps more importantly the manifestation of a generational divide between more libertarian-oriented young professionals and the old-line conservatives who have traditionally run the party" -- what might be called the "Judge Smails" constituency.

As anyone familiar with the film Caddyshack will recall, Judge Elihu Smails was the embodiment of insular, conformist, country-club authoritarianism. The essence of what passed for his character was revealed in an off-hand remark the Judge made to Danny Noonan -- the film's central character -- while delivering a patronizing rebuke to the flawed but essentially well-meaning young man: "I've sentenced boys younger than you to the gas chamber. Didn't want to do it -- I felt I owed it to them."

There is a kind of person on whom the irony of that comment would be lost. It is the same kind of person who, in contemplating the murder of Jose Guerena, would instinctively sympathize with the assailants, rather than with the victim, his traumatized widow, and his fatherless children. That personality type -- to which I've given the name "punitive populist" -- is well-represented in Republican politics not only in Pima County, but nation-wide.

Such people are disinclined to tolerate so much as a tremor of principled activism on behalf of individual liberty -- even when, as is the case in Pima County, acting on principle would also provide a partisan advantage.

It's interesting to consider this question: What if, rather than condemning police militarization in principle, Brian Miller had used the death of Jose Guerena to fashion a partisan attack against Sheriff Dupnik? If he had insisted that this was a case of power being in the "wrong hands," rather than an object lesson in the evil of State power as such, Miller most likely wouldn't have become the target of the purge. Instead, he committed a sacrilege against the sanctified purveyors of lethal violence, and must now be expelled in disgrace --- for the good of the Party.

While supplies last, I'm sending a copy of Global Gun Grab to anyone who offers a donation of $10 or more. Please use the PayPal button below, or contact me directly (WNGrigg[at]msn[dot]com) for snail mail instructions. Thanks so much!

I discussed Brian Miller's confrontation with the Bolshevik faction of the Pima County GOP during the second hour of last week's edition of Pro Libertate Radio on the Liberty News Radio Network. Go here for the archives.